The New Valley Read online

  But it was the ride back what I miss most. I’d take the back streets, just wind around them for a while. Rolling, rolling. Just give it one pedal and coast till I got to give a pedal again. Sometimes I’d stop. If it was a real good window with the curtains open and something good inside I’d sit a while and watch. Didn’t have to be nothing special. Might just be someone doing dishes or running a brush on the dog. I had a game what was to make like I could feel the hot water on my hands and think on how I could figure from the plates what’d been for supper, and how many people’d ate, if I had a wife or any kids or maybe watched after my folks what’s got old. If it was a dog being rubbed down, I’d give it a name and think on what kind of dog it was and all the years I’d had it. Sometimes, if I didn’t feel like bed, I’d bike on over to the low house what’s just off Main Street, where the home sellers do their work. It was closed and dark but if I come up near so’s my flashlight was right to the glass I could see what house picture they had put up. They didn’t change house pictures regular as the Pine Top did specials, but that just made it all the better to come up on it wondering if they’d got a new one put in the window. If it was one I ain’t seen yet, nor wore out with my thinking on it, I could stand there for a hour, just looking.

  But that Friday I’d already gone to the Pine Top to get the fixings for my plan, and I was too nervous to focus on no windows. I stayed home, watched the dinky TV what Mister Gilkey kept in the office, ate Slim Jims and chips and sunflower seeds till I thought it was late enough.

  I don’t like to ride on the big roads heading out of town what with the vehicles and the way Roy’s so strong on legal rules. He spends his time in the mail car going slow piece by piece, so when he gets on the big road he wants to go full out and no futzing tractor or bike riding idgit getting in his way. But I know all the back ones what get you anywhere you want. That night where the Pembroke Road hits town I took it. You can get from the Pembroke Road to 502 on a bike, but I wouldn’t try it with no vehicle. If you take good aim with your eyes when you come up even with the creek you can see way out there the lamppost back of Crigger’s Den. I cut straight cross.

  Her car was out there like it was on the Mondays. I leaned the bike against her driver door. There was music still coming from inside and the kind of noise what means a pile of people. I knowed she might work more late Friday. I come prepared to wait. I took off my bag and took everything out and got it all ready behind the propane tank. You ever tried to count all the stars there is? Dad Kreager said it was the best way to improve the mind. He said it was like push-ups for my brain.

  Ain’t nothing the matter with your brain, he said. It just ain’t been trained right account of how you was brung into the world and passed on from owner to owner like Carter. He said, I got Carter from the pound when he was a pup, but he’d already been fucked up by two other owners. You know what they said?

  I said, What?

  They said he was brain damaged. Look at him. Come here Carter. Come here Carter. There. Look at those eyes. You ever knowed a smarter dog?

  I said, No.

  That’s right. There’s not a thing wrong with his brain, is there Carter? They just didn’t train it right is all. Once I got my hands on him I knowed what to do. Didn’t I Carter? Look at him, Geoff. Look at that smarts in them eyes. You can see it. Paw, Carter. Good boy. Give me the other paw. Good boy. Find the ball. Ball Carter. Find the ball Carter. Look at him go, huh? You think you got that kind of smarts in your eyes? What do you think, Geoff? I tell you what, time I’m through with you you will.

  From then on out, times Mom Kreager left for work Dad Kreager put me out in the backyard and told me not to come in till I’d got a number on the stars. I’d stand out there and do it. He’d get on the kitchen phone and start his love talking with who was on the other end. I could hear it through the windows. It didn’t stop till I come in with my count.

  Hold on baby, he’d say and look up and say, You getting better, Geoff. Try it again.

  I’d go back out. You’d think it’d be easier on cloudy days, but it ain’t. The open bits keep changing so’s you got to start over all the time. I like clear nights better. Clear nights I’d be out there hours. Carter’d come and sit by me. One thousand twenty one. One thousand twenty two. I’d pat his head on each new count.

  That Friday night back of the Den what with no Party Van and it not Monday but Friday, like I said, I walked out into the crap field to get away from the lamp. It was the time for peepers. They was loud. I moved a little bit more toward the creek till I thought their noise was exact as loud as the noise coming from Crigger’s and I stood there, right smack between, looking up. It’s not easy, but it does pass the time.

  I’d done all the ones one thumb up from the top of things and was doing the last bit over the dead trees on the hill when the music shut off inside Crigger’s. I could feel it gone from my left side. After that, I couldn’t keep my place in the sky. I kept looking at the kitchen door. The customer noise was going. The last cars pulled out the front. I was so nervous, I quit trying to do nothing else but breathe. When she come out it took me a while to get even that working. She made it all the way to her car and was looking at my bike leaning on it by the time I called her name. She looked my way.

  Who’s that? she said.

  I come out the scrub into the light.

  She said, Geoffrey?

  What? I said.

  Jesus, if you didn’t creep me out.

  I come by to say hi.

  This yours?

  Yuhuh.

  You ride all the way here from home?

  Yuhuh. I brung you something, too.

  Let me guess.

  Okay.

  Beer. She laughed at something. Look at your face, she said. What’d you think I was gonna guess?

  It’s only part beer, I said.

  What’s the other part?

  Come on, I said. I’ll show you.

  She didn’t move. Geoffrey? she said. You know what time it is?

  Nuhuh.

  It’s past two.

  You eat yet?

  I’m bushed, Geoffrey. And yeah, since you ask, I’ve been picking all night.

  Well you still hungry?

  Not really.

  For a sec she didn’t say nothing and I didn’t say nothing and then she laughed again. You oughta never talk, she said. You oughta just make those faces. Get me to do anything.

  She followed me over toward the propane tank.

  She said, You know there’s all kinds of other places we could go to talk.

  And then we was back there and she got quiet at what I’d done.

  Even though I’d pinned them down with stones, one of the paper plates was flipped over by something. The one with her name on it was still good, though. I’d done it in ketchup. I could see her looking at all the little white packets I’d throwed in the weeds.

  I did yours in seven, I told her. Took ten for mine, cause it’s got more letters.

  She took a step off where she’d stood on the tablecloth. You could see the print she’d left on the white lacey part.

  It’s my sister Jackie’s, I said.

  She know you have it?

  No.

  She gone down and picked up one of the dish rags. Cloth, she said.

  Them is hers too.

  Very nice, she said.

  I tore open the six pack and opened hers for her. It’s not cold, I said.

  That’s fine, she said.

  I put one of the Styrofoam carryouts in front of her, told her, That’s not hot no longer, neither.

  They were gonna mix to medium inside us anyway, she said.

  Some bugs had got themselves dead in her name and I told her Sorry and Excuse the reach, just like Ma B teached, and picked them out of the ketchup for her. I said, Don’t worry, these got tape. The sound of me peeling it off the styrofoam made her scrunch. I told her, Sorry.

  You gotta stop saying sorry so much.

  I told her
okay and how I didn’t know what she wanted so I’d just got us both chicken suppers. I said, I got them lunch-time cause they’s cheaper but they been in the fridge.

  She sat there looking at them. Oh I wish I’d told you, she said. I’m a vegetarian.

  You don’t eat meat?

  No.

  Not even fried?

  It’s okay, she said. I’ll just eat the crisp give you the rest.

  I started to peel mine but she said, No, no.

  I looked at her.

  Oh hell, she said. Go ahead.

  While I took the crust off and put it on her plate she dug in her purse for something what turned out to be a lighter. She kept digging and come out with one of them rubber bands what women put in their hair, and lit the lighter and put the rubber band around it and took her thumb away and it stayed lit.

  Hey, I said.

  Old trick from high school, she said.

  She took her biscuit out the Styrofoam and put it on the ground and stuck the lighter in it.

  We watched the flame while we ate. When she’d ate the crust off hers, she give me a piece of meat.

  What’s your mom like? she said.

  Which one?

  Your mom.

  I got three of them. But I don’t live at home. I got my own place.

  In Ripplemead?

  Yuhuh. In the office.

  Your dad’s office?

  No. I told you. I don’t live at home.

  Right, she said.

  I’m not a kid.

  I know, she said. She stopped wiping at her fingers with the rag. Not the gas station office?

  It’s only for now, I said.

  You live at Sunoco?

  I make good money. I could afford another place.

  Is that even legal?

  I buyed that bike didn’t I?

  How long have you been there?

  I got a sleeping bag and a duffel bag and my own key to the Men’s Room round the side.

  How long have you lived there, Geoffrey?

  I don’t know. Three four years.

  She reached into her bag and tapped out a smoke and lit it in the lighter candle.

  Well that’s shameful, she said. I don’t care how many mothers you have.

  I got three.

  Shame on all of them. And especially your real one.

  You mean my—

  I mean the one who gave birth to you. Shame on her.

  That’s what Ma B says.

  Well shame on Ma B too. Letting you live in a gas station. Where’s all the rest of your family?

  I got Jackie who’s called a foster.

  I mean blood family.

  You mean the Sarvers?

  Sure. The Sarvers.

  There ain’t no Sarvers left.

  What do you mean?

  They all dead.

  All of them?

  All of them. They was all of them found dead. You never heard how it goes?

  No. How’s it go?

  Goes like this. They was hill people. Used to live in town like anybody but they wasn’t like nobody. So’s nobody much cared for them. They was ugly what they had stupid faces and some walked funny and some did fits and some even howled and moaned at night till the whole town knowed they was wrong in the head. And the whole town gets together and thinks up how they wanted them out. They come to all the doors of all the Sarvers. Got fire in their hands and guns and whatnot. And they say, We don’t want you near our daughters. And we don’t want what’s wrong on you to come off on us. And you don’t belong, is what. And get or else. So’s all them Sarvers was drived out, way out to the hills, drived far as the town people could push them, drived with everything what they got from dogs and mules to tables and chairs, drived away from Ripplemead, and Narrows, and Pembroke, any other town, what put them smack in the middle way out where the Swain comes down through the New Valley. You ever been out there?

  Sure.

  There ain’t much.

  No there isn’t.

  That’s why they was put out there. They was told don’t come back. Don’t nobody know what them Sarvers lived on or how they done it. But they did. Dug roots. Killed what animals they got in their traps. There was some what said they lived in caves and some what said they builded houses and some what said they just sleeped out under the stars. It was a place all of their own what they called Sarverville. Only time they left it was to sell the trees what they cut down. Every now and again they come out the woods to the towns. They come on carts drug by mules, come sitting top them stacks of logs. You could smell them a mile away. They was crawling with critters. Gone on like that for fifty years. Except when they come to town to sell that wood, God was the only one what woulda knowed them Sarvers even lived in the valley at all. Which was why it took so long for the news to get out how they was all dead. Nobody knows why. Just the guy owned the beef farm up the valley found his dogs sick one night and thinks they ate too much groundhog what they ain’t used to, but what they throwed up ain’t groundhogs. It’s pieces of people. Fingers and toes and ears. So he follows them the next day down to Sarverville and they every one of them dead. Some of them lying in beds made of bark. Some crawled out into the woods. Some holding to each other or curled on their own, but not a mark on one of them save what the dogs done. Out of the whole family of them there was only one little baby left.

  And that was you, she said.

  That was me. They found me pinned tight in my dead Mama’s arms.

  They did, she said.

  They had to cut them off to get me out.

  Who told you that? she said.

  Dad Kreager.

  Let me guess. He was the one who found you?

  Nuhuh. The State give me to him.

  Hill people, she said. I bet he told you lots of stories.

  Yuhuh. He was good at them.

  I bet he was, she said. I’ll tell you something though, and I want you to listen to me. There are lots of good stories that aren’t true. In fact most of them. Now listen Geoffrey. You’ve got family somewhere.

  They’s all dead.

  Did you ever look?

  For Sarverville?

  No, for your mother. Your father.

  Dad Kreager told me—

  I mean even in the phone book.

  They ain’t no Sarvers in it, I told her. They didn’t have phones out there.

  Let me guess, that’s from Mister Kreager too.

  They’s all dead, I tried to tell her.

  Listen, she said. I know this much. If I had a little baby and everyone was dying around me I’d sure as hell find some way to get him out.

  The lighter candle looked done and then did a little more and then was done.

  You don’t got a little baby, I said.

  What makes you say that?

  You’s too pretty.

  She laughed. It was a strange sound after all our quiet talk. What’s that got to do with anything? she said.

  The way you get upset. It ain’t like the way a mom gets riled, what it makes you look more younger stead of more old.

  It does, huh? she said. Well I could use a little of that. And no I don’t have any kids.

  Why not? I said.

  She drank her beer till it was empty and then she shook it and said, This is empty.

  I got her one and got me one and opened both.

  When we was drinking again she said, I’m married you know.

  You is? I said.

  She held up her hand. Under the big lamp there was all her rings.

  Which one is it? I said.

  She pointed to it.

  Oh, I said. How come you don’t got kids?

  She laughed. You don’t let go, do you?

  I put down my beer.

  She said, Waker doesn’t want any.

  Is Waker your husband’s name?

  Waker Podawalski. I can’t have kids, she said. After I got—after the operation it was hard to get him to even look at me. So when he said he wanted me t
o get my tubes tied—he liked to finish inside a woman and he didn’t want to worry he said. And you know things were already bad enough by then that I went along with it. I thought maybe it would average things out, you know, make him overlook the—what they done to my breasts. You know even things out a little. It’s not many women you can just finish inside and not worry.

  She looked at me. You aren’t getting any of this are you?

  You had a operation? I said.

  This time her laugh was one of her not really laughs and she said, Oh Honey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to confuse you. There’s nothing complicated about it, actually. I had what’s called a tubal ligation.

  What’s that?

  It’s when you get your tubes tied.

  I must have been staring at her because she said, Oh honey again.

  You got tubes? I said.

  Down here. She pointed toward her place. Then she said, Maybe we better pack up. She took her lighter and pulled off the band and threw it into the weeds with the ketchup packs. She took the band and started to put it in her hair.

  Can I see them? I said.

  When you hear her best good laugh it makes all her other laughs seem like they ain’t worth the name.

  No, she said. They’re inside.